Archive for the ‘Vomity Stuff’ Category

Most Fridays, I post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!

And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memory, word for word, photogenically, I say:

What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!

Dude… SO unfair. I went through this already. As a kid, in second grade or whenever, I paid my dues. My lice dues. I sat forever as my mother combed poison through my scalp and hair, tearing the clumps that would allow quick passage and generally freaking me out to imagine those disgusting bugs laying their eggs in my head. Didn’t help that my school – a public school in DC, Lafayette – had a nurse’s office with a giant poster of a louse magnified, like, x 10,000.

If you’ve never seen a louse magnified 10,000 times, let me enlighten you: they are horrific. Seriously. Like, Roger Corman, or whoever is the current Horror Movie Master of our day (Andrew Weiner?) – I’m now giving you a free idea (though I do expect top billing and points on the back end if you use it): GIANT LICE. Seriously, they would be scarier than any Chuckie, Freddy, or Jason.

I’m not kidding! Take a second, and Google them. Or just click here. I didn’t want to actually put the image in my blog because honestly, I don’t want my blog to be directly associated with hurling. (Unless I’m doing the hurling, in which case I may write about it but I’m still not going to post a picture of it happening, ya know?)

Ok, so back to the main point of this blog. Me. I had lice. FUCKING LICE!!!!!!!!!

MOTHER FUCKING LICE!!!!!

Excuse me. I think the lice took over my brain and tripped a wire there. I’m back.

My middle daughter brought it home from school or wherever about two weeks ago. She had about ten of those little suckers crawling around her scalp. Her little sister had three. Both cases were gone in a day, after our nanny – who turns out to be a Lice Commando – seriously, she’s like the Rambo of Lice– hey, Roger Corman/Andy Wiener – there’s your Angelina Jolie! Lice Raider! – anyway, my nanny got a hold of some Pantene conditioner and a good lice comb, and, “voila!” Lice: Exterminated.

Not so easy with my lice. MY lice, turns out, had staying power. It was like all the coffee I drink had gone into their little lice bodies through my blood that they were sucking and turned them into Super Lice. Oh, I had the Lice Commando comb my hair, too. Twice. Didn’t work.

I had to take matters into my own hands (10 hours of running after three crazy out-of-school-for-the-summer kids, I can’t imagine why my nanny didn’t want to stay at my house yet ANOTHER hour just to help comb through a lice-infested head), so I continued her good work, every day, in the shower, myself.

The itching continued. And continued! What is up with that? The itching seemed to spread all over – the lice finally went away after the first week but the itching would flaring up any time I’d think about the whole nightmare. Psychosomatic, I know, but come on – enough already! Why don’t you leave me along and go pick on a kid who is only 400,000 x your size, you big bullies!!

It’s always fun for my children to visit my mother in Maryland because her house is kind of a Shangri La for kids. (And since I’m her kid… the place rocks for me too, and really anyone who visits, even the GrownupGrownups.)

Mom has giant house with a dock, perched on a beautiful creek. There’s a giant pool, lots of wildlife and forest-ish stuff for kids to pretend to get lost in, a jet ski and a motor boat that are always the hit of the party despite occasional whiplashy side-effects.

My stepfather is cranky but completely loveable and he seals the deal by holing up in his ham radio shack all day to escape the madness (did I mention he doesn’t like mess? and when we visit it’s like we brought the NY zoo with us?) and when kids venture to his shack they are rewarded with gizmos and dials and hoozy-whatsits more dazzling than a 747 cockpit, along with Oreo cookies and personalized ham radio postcards to take with them.

My mother cooks and bakes and buys nonstop goodies so we all enter into a sugar coma immediately and usually only wake up from it about halfway back on the 6 hour flight home. And while the outside is fun and the kids would swim from sunup to sundown if we’d let them, the giant TV in the upstairs playroom is the perfect babysitter, keeping the kids quiet and happy while the adults get some ‘us time’ at the dinner table downstairs.

Except.

No one knows how to use the TV remote. Or maybe my step-nephew does, and possibly my brother does, but they usually aren’t around. To my stepfather’s credit, he FINALLY got rid of the “Universal Remote” (that was literally IMPOSSIBLE TO USE) after only 5 years of insisting “it works” so it is now sortof possible to navigate around the various shows, but it’s not easy.

So when I went upstairs to take my son through the play room to my bedroom where his night clothes were, the TV show programmed for the kids had ended and there was another program running.

Hmmmm, how shall I put this delicately?

A pornographic program.

Regardless of who is watching it, I think porn sucks. But when it falls under the unsuspecting gaze of my EIGHT YEAR OLD????!!!

Oh hell-to-the-NO.

My son went hyper immediately (may have had something to do with my hand that slapped down hard over his eyes), and it was him-against-me for a few seconds of primal struggle until I managed to grab the closest remote and NOT figure out how the fuck to turn the danged thing OFF.

AAARRRGH!

I finally got it – close enough – the TV still buzzed but no show ran – and hurried my giggly son off to the bathroom to brush teeth.

The whole thing was forgotten in a minute, as no pornographic show holds a candle to a new toothbrush that lights up like a firefly when it comes to an eight year old.

Or so I thought.

Because as I walked my darling boy from the bathroom to his bedroom, he remarked sweetly, “Ima? When I’m thirteen, can I watch whatever TV shows I want?”

Check out this picture (and ignore the fact that my dismal photoshop skills prevented me from turning it right-side-up):

That’s right.

A motherfucking mouse is living in our house.

Oh, I’ve seen the motherfucker. He’s fast. I screamed a little last night when I came across him in our laundry room – you see, I thought he was gone/dead already, since we first saw him over 2 weeks ago, immediately had the exterminator company come, and hadn’t seen him since.

What I didn’t realize is that that little motherfucker is an avocado addict.

You see, each of the other 2 times we saw him scamper down the hallway (I TOLD you that you’d be grossed out!) I walked around the house to look for any damage he may have done, and each time, found one of my recently purchased organic avocados gnawed into, its gaping hole staring at me from the fruit plate atop our dining room table – all the other fruit untouched.

I moved the avocados into the fridge and covered the bowl of fruit, and kept it covered for the week following the exterminator’s visit. When I uncovered the fruit, I was relieved to see no sign of the mouse for the next five days.

Then… yesterday… I put my newly purchased & not quite ripe avocados where I always put them to ripen – in the fruit bowl.

That little motherfucker.

Apparently, he managed to completely avoid the poison and traps set for him around the house for the past 2 weeks… and he – THANKFULLY – did not touch any of our grains, fruits, or other snack items that we carelessly left around the house and on the counters over the past few days.

But I guess our guy has a thing for avocados.

My Kabbalah teacher suggested that mice in the house can also symbolize a spiritual problem – specifically, that there may be a “leak in our money” – which is completely frightening because the LAST time we had mice (yeah, I know, you now never want to come over, right?) – it was 3 years ago & we found out after we got rid of the mice that OUR MOTHERFUCKING ASSISTANT HAD BEEN STEALING ABOUT $90,000 FROM OUR COMPANY.

Wish me luck that we can plug these holes fast, kill the little motherfucker (or run him out of town), and that the worst of the damage was just my beloved avocados.